Eradication
by latetothpartyhp
Summary: What happened to Clark after the geothermal explosion in Doomsday?  Prequel to The Lens Through Which We Look and The Secret Parts of Fortune.


Title: Eradication

Author: latetothpartyhp / FlyingHigh

Pairing: Chlark-ish

Rating: PG

Warnings: Not the thing to read if you're worried about being buried alive.

Spoilers: For _Doomsday_

Summary: What did happen to Clark after the geothermal blast? Prequel to _The Lens Through Which We Look_ and _The Secret Parts of Fortune_.

He is choking, twisting, hitting, grappling, but most of all he is falling. The force of their fall is hampered by physics; with the immense amount of dirt surrounding them, even they could not outperform gravity for long. Eventually they will stop and the air pocket they are creating with their velocity will be filled in and cover them, trapping them in the dark. Then they will both enter the outer circle of hell: always living, but never alive.

In this ground he will lie, perhaps for a millennium, perhaps until the planet is consumed by the grotesque, red swelling of the dying sun. In this ground he must lie. If he should be uncovered, if he should awake, then so would the Beast. If that happened then all of humanity would lie here with him.

He has to remain buried.

He has to get as far down as possible.

He struggles harder against the Beast, but struggling is becoming more difficult. They are almost at a stop now. The soil is already beginning to collapse around them, creeping under his eyelids and up his nose. He can feel the Beast raging against the weight of it, furious with its volume. It's fighting the dirt now more than it's fighting him, although its flailing limbs still hurt like hell when they land.

They are hitting less often though. The Beast is moving away from him. Its thrashing is digging it a deeper grave. If he could breathe right now he would sigh in relief; he is getting tired. He wonders if the Beast needs to breathe, if Davis had ever tried suicide by asphyxiation. He doesn't know how long he can hold his own breath. Kara had spent hours at a time outside the atmosphere. He didn't know if she'd had to come down for air or had simply gotten bored.

He'd never asked her.

It's not a big deal. He'll find for himself soon enough.

The dirt is gritting into his wounds and it stings, but it's futile to brush it away. There are a billion trillion grains where those came from. In the dark he can hear faint, random scratching a little below him. It's a depressing sound – if he ever manages to reverse his descent and scramble top-side, Clark will have to follow. Bring it back down and obliterate it once more. He's not sure he has the energy to do that, but he will have to.

This planet has cradled him, sheltered him, allowed him to live when he long ago should have been dead. It is his home.

And it is Lana's home.

And his mother's.

And Lois and Ollie and Jimmy and even Lex's.

And Chloe's.

Next to Lana, she had suffered the most from his coming here. Now he had a chance to make that up to her. She and Jimmy could reconcile, now that Davis no longer needed her to keep from shifting into the Beast and Jimmy knew his secret. His secret had always stood between her and Jimmy, but now that was gone, and he was gone, and it wouldn't matter anymore. He wouldn't matter anymore. She had told him that losing him was not good for the world and he had told her it was a risk he had to take. Had to, and is, and will, because what was good for the world was to be kept safe from the thing he'd brought with him when he'd arrived.

It was best this way. She no longer had to feel as if she had to protect him. She was free to be happy now, like she had been in the vision Jor-El had sent him in which she'd never met him.

Please, he pleads with the darkness and the tremors around him and the destiny he'd been handed. Please let her be happy.

Please.

For a moment, all is still. Crushing tons of darkness presses into him and over him like a cosmic womb.

Then there is light.

Light, all around him. Light, sparkling in the clear air. Light, bouncing off the crystals of the planet where he had been born and dazzling the eye in a way the Kryptonian star had not done in millions of years. He breathes it in, drinks it, opens every cell to it.

He does not know what is happening to him, only that it is the most wonderful thing that ever has happened. And as he thinks that, the voice of the crystals echoes off of them and into his mind:

"Kal-El, my son. What have you done?"


End file.
